Former President Donald Trump is accusing states that are trying to use the 14th Amendment to disqualify him from the 2024 ballot of staging a "trick" to steal the election from him and give it to President Joe Biden.
"Almost all legal scholars have voiced opinions that the 14th Amendment has no legal basis or standing relative to the upcoming 2024 Presidential Election," Trump posted on his Truth Social page Monday night, reports The Washington Examiner.
"Like Election Interference, it is just another 'trick' being used by the Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, to again steal an Election that their candidate, the WORST, MOST INCOMPETENT, & MOST CORRUPT President in U.S. history, is incapable of winning in a Free and Fair Election," he added.
Trump's critics, along with some conservative legal scholars, are saying that the 14th Amendment bars a person who has sworn to support the Constitution from holding office again if they have "engaged in insurrection" against the United States or have "given aid or comfort" to the country's enemies.
Professors William Baude and Michael Stokes, who are associated with the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian legal organization, write in a 126-page report that the constitutional amendment "disqualified former President Donald Trump [from office], and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election," reports Newsweek.
Several prominent Democrats are also saying the amendment can block Trump, including Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who has argued that there is a "powerful argument to be made" and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who says the provision "fits Donald Trump to a T."
The use of the 14th Amendment has been gaining ground since four legal indictments have been announced against Trump, and now, some Republicans are also looking to take steps to keep him off the ballots.
Free Speech for People, a legal advocacy group, last month sent letters to election officials in nine states to keep the former president off the ballots, and New Hampshire Republicans have contacted New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan over the disqualification argument.
Scanlan says he is seeking input from the state's attorney general and other counsel before deciding.
Meanwhile, Newsweek reports that Trump's supporters are vowing to wage a write-in campaign if Trump is thrown off state ballots.
Charles Downs, who writes for the Alex Jones-founded site National File, posted on X that "a lot of Americans will write in Trump if he is illegally removed off the ballot. That being said, it's more likely than not SCOTUS [Supreme Court of the United States] will block efforts to kick Trump off the ballot. In America, the people, not the Deep State, choose the president."
Amy Kremer, co-founder of Women for Trump, also posted a photo of Trump's mug shot from Georgia, and said "if Trump is removed from the ballot, I will write him in," with Kandiss Taylor, who launched an unsuccessful primary challenge to Georgia's GOP Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022, adding "same."
Most states allow write-in ballots in presidential elections but often require potential candidates to file paperwork saying they want to run so the votes are counted separately.
Adam Kamenstein, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner with the Los Angeles-based law firm Adams, Duerk & Kamenstein, told Newsweek the 14th Amendment argument is "compelling" but "unlikely to gain broad acceptance."
"Like all legal arguments, its practical application rests on the common acceptance of certain facts," he said. "We don't have that here, today, where facts and truth vary depending on one's political point of view. Even if everyone agreed on the underlying constitutional scholarship, we would never see agreement on the facts to which it must be applied."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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